Antimony
by Anthiena
Summary: AU - The shadow Danny casts as a hero might be too much to live up to... can she? Danny faces her first real challenge from a metal hunter during an extra credit assignment: observing Samson the ape. QUALITY IMPROVED FOR CHAPTER TWO-R&R
1. Chapter 1

Antimony  
>By: Anthiena<br>Disclaimer: This makes me no money.  
>Note: AU. Antimony is a metal that is relatively soft and somewhat poisonous. Was once used in makeup. The alchemical symbol for antimony is also the symbol used today for Venus and for female gender.<p>

Chapter 1: Moon

I thought it was going away-no random floating, no pants dropping, no sinking into the floor. Thank goodness it didn't seem to happen when I was asleep-no waking up under my bed or falling onto my bed. Yet. I just suffered through what every adolescent does and hated biology. At least I knew I still.. you know. Had it.

Do you really expect me to spit it out? Pfft. Well, anyway, I was just trying to forget what I'd seen. It was impossible, insane. The white hair? Green eyes? It couldn't have been real. Yet, by the time that time of the month was over, it was back with a vengeance. The weirdness, I mean. I had to get a hold of it, just so I wouldn't find myself blinking at my class from the freaking ceiling.

Sam had a bad idea-if I messed up on controlling my powers a certain amount of times, I'd have to run "The Gauntlet". Go to that... other me... and fly, phase and go invisible at the right times-and it would be different every time. The bright side of that is that I figured out how to use them on purpose.

That was something, I suppose. It was when one of those things showed up at my school over a stupid menu change that I figured it could be useful for things besides making me a freak. Why did I go into the stupid portal? Well, there's nothing I can really do about it. The second month had the same thing-weak for a few days and then strong for a couple before going back to... well, _normal_ for me now.

I keep telling myself, _Danny, this is your life now_. All it does is make me want hit my head on my desk. Now, if those ghosts would ignore me when I'm on my period or in school-yeah, right. Not happening. The heck did you get yourself into, Danielle Fenton? Can't blame it on my parents or Sam, I chose to walk into it. Now, if only dad would get the clue that I will never, ever date Tuck or that jerk Dash, that will make life bearable. As if that'll happen.


	2. Hunter's Signs

Antimony

By: Anthiena

Note: Clearly AU. What Danny says is correct-lasers give off too much heat and require too much energy to be miniaturized into a side-arm. Sorry, Star Wars fans and true believers! ASL has been taught to simians-in fact, they are rather good at that and picking out pictures to make up words. Early title? Glitches of the Hunted. Don't worry about Technus, you'll see more of him later, just like in the show.

Chapter 2: Hunter's Signs

To where ever the portal leads with the crap I am dealing with lately. First, a wild-haired dweeb pops out and takes over the toasters, phones, TVs and anything else just about and wrecks my parent's lab. While yelling his name and proclaiming himself master of technology. Luckily, I grabbed the first invention he didn't bother with and sucked him up into something that made him into goo. I think, I am not actually totally sure. Anyway, that was only the_ beginning_ of my week.

To get up my grades in English, I took on extra credit, observing the new ape at the zoo, Samson. It's an endangered species, therefore important. Don't ask how observing an animal gets me extra credit in English because I don't know, either. Oh well, I figured that it would be easy stuff. I wrote up notes and it was alright the first time I watched it. It got boring pretty quick, though. All this ape did was pace, scratch its butt and stuff like that. Sometimes the ape made motions at people. Of course I wrote all of it down, drawing out the motions. Extra credit, you know.

The second night, I brought Sam and Tucker to keep me company (and awake) through the night. I thought this would be a _great_ idea. Of course, even though I did fall asleep around midnight, at two, that turned out not to be a problem. In fact, it was so much not a problem that Sam yelling something I did not catch woke me up. Shortly after, well-I was too busy pulling myself and my friends away from the blast that made a smoking hole of where we were sitting. Good thing for twitch reflexes from video games and my mom. Okay, Fenton bad idea number 251.

I rolled to my knees and reached for that knot of cold that was the dead part of me. I was still scared-this was obviously not as mostly harmless as the lunch lady ghost I didn't care about. I was surprised when I saw him-it-whatever. It was metal, with rivets, green fire for what seemed like hair-in a mohawk no less, green eye/sensors/whatever but wore clothes and a sly grin I _really_ didn't like. "What a prize, a child both human and ghost! You'll make an excellent trophy."

Uh, no. "Sorry dude, I would make a terrible trophy-oh yeah, punk is dead!" I flew up at him, knocking him back and away from my friends.

Sam and Tucker could stay behind, we didn't think to bring any weapons, there haven't been a whole lot of ghosts around. Excuses aside, I had to beat the tar out of this guy and _quickly_, so people didn't get hurt because of me. "Actually, you'd make an excellent rug for my bedroom!" He smirked as something raised out of his arms and darts were fired at me.

I yelped and turned intangible, feeling them go through me. That feels so freaking weir-wait. I shouldn't feel that. I felt burning where they had passed and screeched. "Oh, this is so fu-" I felt myself start to lose altitude as I lost some of the cold feeling that was my other half.

Oh, crap. I landed pretty hard on my side, coughing up... red-flecked green. Okay, _that_ is new. My side radiated pain and I fought the dots that swam in front of eyes. Passing out is **so** not an option. I dragged my sorry self off the ground, my voice going high. Oh, this is just-I cut the thought and started running, staying ghost. If I went human, I was pretty much done at that point, I figured.

The hunter took his fine time getting to me, walking after me. "You're coughing up blood, ghost child. Just let me put you out and the pain will stop." I cussed at him. "I don't often accept propositions from my prey, it is useless."

Eeewwwwwwww. Like seriously. **Ew**. The burning died down, but I fell over a bush. "Get away from me, creep!"

"Perfect, the paralytic neutralizer is working." He smirked. "I knew this was going to be an easy mark."

I wiggled my toes in my boots-no, I wasn't paralyzed. In fact, I felt pretty good, if confused. He picked me up by the hazmat. Ow, my ribs. I kicked him in the chest for his troubles and swung at his jaw. That usually distracts about anybody. He let me go after a few kicks, looking only moderately annoyed. Oh crap, that is bad.

I flew weirdly, trying to get some distance. He pointed his palm and metal opened to a hole and energy spat at me faster than I could dodge it in my state. I screamed and got knocked into a cage-I had luckily phased past the bars. I groaned and got to my feet. I am so not ready to die for real. This guy made me look like a wimp.

I looked up in time and took a stance just as he walked through the bars with a creepy smile. "You have issues, man!" I informed him dutifully. Hey, someone has gotta do it.

To my surprise, a familiar big ape was approaching the ghost. The hunter studied the ape. "Well, you are fairly ra-" The ghost was picked up and tossed at the bars. Wait, what? Something able to grab a ghost?

"Okay, that was lucky." I mumbled and took the chance to start really fighting this guy.

Kicks, punches, nothing seemed to really slow this guy down. I was pretty unnerved by him not seeming like he felt anything. I saw Tucker come close. Oh, no-he had something in his hands that blasted at the metal ghost. The metal actually dented, for which, he treated us to some pretty colorful swearing and a retreat. I looked over to the gorilla who made a series of motions. Some were like the earlier motions, some new. The ape went back to laying down sort of as I made tracks out of the cage.

I didn't leave ghost form until we were out of the zoo, Sam catching up with us. "Danny, you look really bad-we should go get you wrapped up-" she felt my sides and I yelped. "Definitely, you have cracked ribs."

Great. Just great. I touched the liquid on my lips-green-flecked red, which unfortunately is the color of my blood. "Okay, my blood is green as a ghost. Just saying." I commented as she got me to somewhere where I could be treated. This wasn't exactly the first time I got hurt, but this is the first serious injury and kinda-sorta the first broken bone. I am pretty sure I was gonna get more and worse as time went on.

This could only get worse. "Why did he run from just this?" He showed me some weird-looking tube thing with a bunch of fiber-optic cables poking out around where a regular gun would have the slide and whatnot.

"It's one of my parent's special weapons. I remember that my parents claimed that they aren't laser guns-laser guns are impossible, lasers give off too much heat to miniaturize and use them like guns. This is uh... something different, based on uh... the stuff that the portal's made of. Ectoplasm, this doctor out in New York calls it." I told them. "All I can tell is that it's some weird battery."

Tucker stashed it in the cool-looking messenger bag he carries along with this really awesome... I can't really call it a PDA, a computer or a cell phone, though it's all of these. He built the thing and he's always swapping parts out every so often. "Okay, we should find other weapons like this. Easy, right?" Sam asked.

"It might be." I shrugged.

It wasn't. I tried to focus both on the battle at hand and my homework. Hand movements. I was on the bus-flight is nice, but I can't really read or focus on much but going about a hundred miles per hour. It's fun like nothing else-but that's half the problem. The other half is focusing on not crashing into stuff like buildings-bet Superman never had that problem.

"Are you studying ASL?" Came a voice.

I looked up. "ASL?" I echoed. It was an older red-headed woman. She looked really nice.

"American Sign Language. Those are hand signals-hungry, little, water, friend-where did you learn those?" The woman asked.

"You're not going to believe this..." I began.

Did I miss my stop? Oh yeah. I got something that I needed both for the project and for the battle to come. I made a phone call to the zoo before getting to school. All that day, I kept sensing ghosts, only to find nothing there. "Am I going crazy, Sam?" I asked her.

"You mean we're sane to begin with? That news is amazing. Especially to my parents." She rolled her eyes.

"Ha, ha, ha. I think that weird metal ghost is just hanging around, trying to scare me." I rolled my eyes.

I felt like there was something staring me in the face. Something that should have been obvious. None of the ghosts I'd seen were anything like this creep. I had to go back to the ape for one more night of observation, so there I went. We went fully armed this time. "This stuff isn't going to mutate us, is it?" Tucker asked.

I shrugged. "Nah. What happened to me involved a lot of volts and amps. This doesn't have nearly enough to kill a human It might hurt me, so watch your fire." I spoke.

"Don't worry, I play Medal of Valor!" Tucker grinned.

Sam rolled her eyes. "Well, you did good on that thing already. So let's make sure you repeat that."

We got to the zoo, I transformed and we headed for the ape's habitat. It was closed off for observation according to the sign, but we ignored the signs and got in quickly. I read the placard again out of boredom. It had a tiny map of where it had come from, which quickly became slag as I jumped back. I swore, Sam and Tucker acting quickly and getting out the weird guns. The ghost had missed on purpose, I think.

He smirked as the metal that it had come from retreated back into his arm. "No, it's Skulker."

"Ask me if I care!" I flew, trying to keep enough distance so that my friends would have clear shots. He didn't mind the dents that appeared this time as he got hit.

Oh, crap oh crap-I got grabbed and he hit me on the head. I yelped, fighting off the blackout before he tossed me. I crawled into the cage and the ape _definitely_ noticed me, just as I had wanted. I made motions at it that the woman had taught me. See, this ape was very special-they had thought the ape was male and put it in with another some time ago. Seems that this Samson is a Delilah.

Mommy was very pregnant and very angry over Skulker disturbing her and her 'baby'-me. She grabbed him and started tearing him apart. I was not quite expecting for that to be literal. Metal littered the ground around 'mommy' ape. A tiny green thing with barely defined legs and arms and angry red eyes glared at us. "Do you have any idea what it took for me to build that suit?" It squeaked.

I had to laugh, oh god. "All this trouble is from _this_?"

"You will see me again, child!" It screeched as Sam got out the little Fenton thermos.

"You want the honors?" She asked, holding it out to me.

I nodded at her. "Okay, back to the Ghost Zone for you, Skulker." It aimed a hand for me and shot energy, which knocked me back. Okay, not cool. I aimed and sucked in the little pest. "Note to self, little does not mean helpless."

"How did you get the ape to do that?" Sam asked, impressed.

I grinned. "Observing. Samson's easy to communicate with when you pay attention to what she's saying."

"Wait, _she_?" Tucker did a double-take.

I got Skulker back to the ghost zone-the metal went into my mom and dad's lab for study and I finished my report. Totally got full credit for that, by the way-I even got into the paper. 'Local student makes Amazing Discovery'. Close enough, right? I don't care if I'm famous, but that is still so cool.

I guess... it wasn't all bad. I still got to figure out how he shot at me without a gun. That would be pretty useful. I have_ got _to learn how to do that.

**(Sketches of Samson/Delilah and hand positions and movements)**

_**Belly**_

_**Move**_

_**Little**_

_**Hungry**_

_**Help**_

_**Friend**_


End file.
